The 5th Wave (4 page)

“If I show you,” he gasped, rocking back and forth against the bloody concrete, “if
I show you, will you help me?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer because I didn’t have an answer. I was playing this
one nanosecond at a time.

So he decided for me. He wasn’t going to let them win, that’s what I think now. He
wasn’t going to stop hoping. If it killed him, at least he would die with a sliver
of his humanity intact.

Grimacing, he slowly pulled out his left hand. Not much day left now, hardly any light
at all, and what light there was seemed to be flowing away from its source, from him,
past me and out the half-open door.

His hand was caked in half-dried blood. It looked like he was wearing a crimson glove.

The stunted light kissed his bloody hand and flicked along the length of something
long and thin and metallic, and my finger yanked back on the trigger, and the rifle
kicked against my shoulder hard, and the barrel bucked in my hand as I emptied the
clip, and from a great distance I heard someone screaming, but it wasn’t him screaming,
it was me screaming, me and everybody else who was left, if there was anybody left,
all of us helpless, hopeless, stupid humans screaming, because we got it wrong, we
got it all wrong, there was no alien swarm descending from the sky in their flying
saucers or big metal walkers like something out of
Star Wars
or cute little wrinkly E.T.s who just wanted to pluck a couple of leaves, eat some
Reese’s Pieces, and go home. That’s not how it ends.

That’s not how it ends at all.

It ends with us killing each other behind rows of empty beer coolers in the dying
light of a late-summer day.

I went up to him before the last of the light was gone. Not to see if he was dead.
I knew he was dead. I wanted to see what he was still holding in his bloody hand.

It was a crucifix.

5

THAT WAS THE LAST PERSON I’ve seen.

The leaves are falling heavy now, and the nights have turned cold. I can’t stay in
these woods. No leaves for cover from the drones, can’t risk a campfire—I gotta get
out of here.

I know where I have to go. I’ve known for a long time. I made a promise. The kind
of promise you don’t break because, if you break it, you’ve broken part of yourself,
maybe the most important part.

But you tell yourself things. Things like,
I need to come up with something first. I can’t just walk into the lion’s den without
a plan.
Or,
It’s hopeless, there’s no point anymore. You’ve waited too long.

Whatever the reason I didn’t leave before, I should have left the night I killed him.
I don’t know how he was wounded; I didn’t examine his body or anything, and I should
have, no matter how freaked out I was. I guess he could have gotten hurt in an accident,
but the odds were better that someone—or something—had shot him. And if someone or
something had shot him, that someone or
something was still out there…unless the Crucifix Soldier had offed her/him/them/it.
Or he was one of them and the crucifix was a trick…

Another way the Others mess with your head: the uncertain circumstances of your certain
destruction. Maybe that will be the 5th Wave, attacking us from the inside, turning
our own minds into weapons.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won’t die of starvation or exposure or as a meal
for wild animals.

Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.

Okay, that’s not someplace you want to go, Cassie.

Honestly, even though it’s suicide to stay here and I have a promise to keep, I don’t
want to leave. These woods have been home for a long time. I know every path, every
tree, every vine and bush. I lived in the same house for sixteen years and I can’t
tell you exactly what my backyard looked like, but I can describe in detail every
leaf and twig in this stretch of forest. I have no clue what’s out there beyond these
woods and the two-mile stretch of interstate I hike every week to forage for supplies.
I’m guessing a lot more of the same: abandoned towns reeking of sewage and rotting
corpses, burned-out shells of houses, feral dogs and cats, pileups that stretch for
miles on the highway. And bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.

I pack up. This tent has been my home for a long time, but it’s too bulky and I need
to travel light. Just the essentials, with the Luger, the M16, the ammo, and my trusty
bowie knife topping the list. Sleeping bag, first aid kit, five bottles of water,
three boxes of Slim Jims, and some tins of sardines. I hated sardines before the Arrival.
Now I’ve developed a real taste for them. First thing I look for when I hit a grocery
store? Sardines.

Books? They’re heavy and take up room in my already bulging backpack. But I have a
thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every
book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While
the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry
for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother’s
Radio Flyer carting home the books.

The mind-blowing numbers didn’t faze him. The fact that we’d gone from seven billion
strong to a couple hundred thousand in four months didn’t shake his confidence that
our race would survive.

“We have to think about the future,” he insisted. “When this is over, we’ll have to
rebuild nearly every aspect of civilization.”

Solar flashlight.

Toothbrush and paste. I’m determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with
clean teeth.

Gloves. Two pairs of socks, underwear, travel-size box of Tide, deodorant, and shampoo.
(Gonna go out clean. See above.)

Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more.

My plastic baggie stuffed with pictures. Dad. Mom. My little brother, Sammy. My grandparents.
Lizbeth, my best friend. One of Ben You-Were-Some-Kind-of-Serious-Gorgeous Parish,
clipped from my yearbook, because Ben was my future boyfriend and/or/maybe future
husband—not that he knew it. He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people
he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of separation removed.
The only thing wrong with Ben was his height: He was six inches taller than me. Well,
make that two things now: his height and the fact that he’s dead.

My cell phone. It was fried in the 1st Wave, and there’s no way to charge it. Cell
towers don’t work, and there’s no one to call if they did. But, you know, it’s my
cell phone.

Nail clippers.

Matches. I don’t light fires, but at some point I may need to burn something or blow
it up.

Two spiral-bound notebooks, college ruled, one with a purple cover, the other red.
My favorite colors, plus they’re my journals. It’s part of the hope thing. But if
I am the last and there’s no one left to read them, maybe an alien will and they’ll
know exactly what I think of them. In case you’re an alien and you’re reading this:

BITE ME.

My Starburst, already culled of the orange. Three packs of Wrigley’s Spearmint. My
last two Tootsie Pops.

Mom’s wedding ring.

Sammy’s ratty old teddy bear. Not that it’s mine now. Not that I ever cuddle with
it or anything.

That’s everything I can stuff into the backpack. Weird. Seems like too much and not
enough.

Still room for a couple of paperbacks, barely.
Huckleberry Finn
or
The Grapes of Wrath
? The poems of Sylvia Plath or Sammy’s Shel Silverstein? Probably not a good idea
to take the Plath. Depressing. Silverstein is for kids, but it still makes me smile.
I decide to take
Huckleberry
(seems appropriate) and
Where the Sidewalk Ends
. See you there soon, Shel. Climb aboard, Jim.

I heave the backpack over one shoulder, sling the rifle over the other, and head down
the trail toward the highway. I don’t look back.

I pause inside the last line of trees. A twenty-foot embankment runs down to the southbound
lanes, littered with disabled cars,
piles of clothing, shredded plastic garbage bags, the burned-out hulks of tractor
trailers carrying everything from gasoline to milk. There are wrecks everywhere, some
no worse than fender benders, some pileups that snake along the interstate for miles,
and the morning sunlight sparkles on all the broken glass.

There are no bodies. These cars have been here since the 1st Wave, long abandoned
by their owners.

Not many people died in the 1st Wave, the massive electromagnetic pulse that ripped
through the atmosphere at precisely eleven
A.M.
on the tenth day. Only around half a million, Dad guessed. Okay, half a million sounds
like a lot of people, but really it’s just a drop in the population bucket. World
War II killed over a hundred times that number.

And we did have some time to prepare for it, though we weren’t exactly sure what we
were preparing for. Ten days from the first satellite pictures of the mothership passing
Mars to the launch of the 1st Wave. Ten days of mayhem. Martial law, sit-ins at the
UN, parades, rooftop parties, endless Internet chatter, and 24/7 coverage of the Arrival
over every medium. The president addressed the nation—and then disappeared into his
bunker. The Security Council went into a locked-down, closed-to-the-press emergency
session.

A lot of people just split, like our neighbors, the Majewskis. Packed up their camper
on the afternoon of the sixth day with everything they could fit and hit the road,
joining a mass exodus to somewhere else, because anywhere else seemed safer for some
reason. Thousands of people took off for the mountains…or the desert…or the swamps.
You know, somewhere else.

The Majewskis’ somewhere else was Disney World. They weren’t the only ones. Disney
set attendance records during those ten days before the EMP strike.

Daddy asked Mr. Majewski, “So why Disney World?”

And Mr. Majewski said, “Well, the kids have never been.”

His kids were both in college.

Catherine, who had come home from her freshman year at Baylor the day before, asked,
“Where are you guys going?”

“Nowhere,” I said. And I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was still living in denial,
pretending all this crazy alien stuff would work out, I didn’t know how, maybe with
the signing of some intergalactic peace treaty. Or maybe they’d dropped by to take
a couple of soil samples and go home. Or maybe they were here on vacation, like the
Majewskis going to Disney World.

“You need to get out,” she said. “They’ll hit the cities first.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “They’d never dream of taking out the Magic Kingdom.”

“How would you rather die?” she snapped. “Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder
Mountain?”

Good question.

Daddy said the world was dividing into two camps: runners and nesters. Runners headed
for the hills—or Thunder Mountain. Nesters boarded up the windows, stocked up on the
canned goods and ammunition, and kept the TV tuned to CNN 24/7.

There were no messages from our galactic party crashers during those first ten days.
No light shows. No landing on the South Lawn or bug-eyed, butt-headed dudes in silver
jumpsuits demanding to be taken to our leader. No bright, spinning tops blaring the
universal language of music. And no answer when we sent our message. Something like,
“Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don’t kill us.”

Nobody knew what to do. We figured the government sort of did. The government had
a plan for everything, so we assumed
they had a plan for E.T. showing up uninvited and unannounced, like the weird cousin
nobody in the family likes to talk about.

Some people nested. Some people ran. Some got married. Some got divorced. Some made
babies. Some killed themselves. We walked around like zombies, blank-faced and robotic,
unable to absorb the magnitude of what was happening.

It’s hard to believe now, but my family, like the vast majority of people, went about
our daily lives as if the most monumentally mind-blowing thing in human history wasn’t
happening right over our heads. Mom and Dad went to work, Sammy went to day care,
and I went to school and soccer practice. It was so normal, it was damn weird. By
the end of Day One, everybody over the age of two had seen the mothership up close
a thousand times, this big grayish-green glowing hulk about the size of Manhattan
circling 250 miles above the Earth. NASA announced its plan to pull a space shuttle
out of mothballs to attempt contact.